By KEVIN HOOVER
As the saying goes, being finished isn’t supposed to be nearly as much fun as getting finished. And if the thousand-mile journey from concept to creation is worth half a damn, maybe take a few a notes and snap some pics along the way, why don’t ‘ya?
That’s what Neil Marshall did. Realizing that the stories behind the camera on projects like Dog Soldiers and The Descent are just as interesting as those playing out in front of it, he collected and preserved all the accoutrements of his art. When the bellowing of werewolves and predatory night crawlers from within his storage units became too loud to ignore, author Janine Pipe answered their call with pen at the ready. Sausages: The Making of Dog Soldiers was Pipe’s first deep dive into Marshall’s work, initially coming about by way of a magazine article celebrating the 20th anniversary of the cult werewolf classic. In pulling back the curtain on 2005’s The Descent, however, Pipe’s plan was clear from the jump: Go big. Go bold.
Recently revealed at FrightFest, THE MAKING OF THE DESCENT (Telos Publishing) coffee table book features over 350 photos and illustrations from Marshall’s ground-breaking female-forward horror, as well as cast and crew interviews. The project is part of a year-long commemoration of the film’s 20th anniversary, which also includes the newly announced 4K UHD restoration from Lionsgate.
Both Pipe and Marshall, credited as co-authors, discussed their new book with RUE MORGUE.
The Descent has just entered into its 20th anniversary, and while this book is a great way to celebrate such a milestone, the first time you two worked together was to celebrate the anniversary of another of Neil’s films: Dog Soldiers.
Janine Pipe: I got to know Neil because I realized that it was coming up to the 20th anniversary of Dog Soldiers, and I’d always wanted to write something for Fangoria. I’d actually pitched the idea of writing a celebratory anniversary piece to them back in the tail end of ’20 or ‘21. Back in 2002, they’d run a piece on it, so it would be quite good fun to do it in 2022 as well. To make it like a love letter to the film, they asked if I could try and speak to Neil. I was able to find his contact through his agent.
When we did the interview, what we both realized was that while this was a 2000-word piece, there was so much more than that. There were so many more stories and so much more fun that had been had on set. You’ve Got Red on You, the Clark Collis book about Shaun of the Dead, had just come out. Neil said to me, “It would be really amazing if somebody made something like this about one of my films. Would you like to write a book about Dog Soldiers? We’ve already sort of started the process here.”
Oftentimes, a director’s involvement with the book counterpart to their films is usually reserved to a foreword, but you were much more hands on here, Neil. What was your involvement?
Neil Marshall: I’d sneakily asked if Janine would be interested in doing a “Making Of” book about Dog Soldiers because it would be a dream come true to have somebody do a book about one of my films. So that one came about first and then it came to doing THE MAKING OF THE DESCENT. There’s three years between the two 20th anniversaries. People are still asking me questions about Dog Soldiers and The Descent—it’s amazing!
My involvement was providing as much of the material as possible. I’ve hoarded all this stuff for years, and now finally it’s found a purpose! I have stuff from all of my movies, but I probably have more from The Descent than I have about Dog Soldiers. It was a fun experience going back through it all and trying to get CD-ROMs to work again and finding out what was on them. It presents challenges, but we managed to dig out a bunch, which is great for the book.
The very nature of a coffee table book dictates a bounty of glossy, behind-the-scenes photos, but can you elaborate on some of the content within?
JP: We interviewed most of the cast and crew, so those bits and pieces are in there. And most of the stuff is at least new to the book. Yes, there’s old information, because these people have given 20 years’ worth of interviews, right? But there’s stuff in there which is specifically worded for us. And we have the official stills from (film distributor) Pathé. There’s a lot of in there which will never have been seen before because there are photos that the prop guys took—things like that. There are pictures of the caves being constructed. There are things in there that if you’ve watched the film more than once, if you’ve read interviews over the years, you might know. But there’s also little nuggets in there, things that people might not have even thought about. Things to do with the locations, the props and even down to things like Juno’s costume. Read the book and you’ll find out what that was inspired by, because it’s by somebody else in a film you know. There are no accidents in The Descent.
NM: We had access to a whole bunch of photographs that I took when I was making the film. And storyboards, which would never have been seen before, as well as access to the Pathé library of stills, which of only a handful have ever been released.
If a film achieves a level of success, then it’s all but given that a “Making Of” book is sure to follow at some point. But the creators of the film aren’t necessarily always involved in the book’s production, and even fewer serve as co-author. Neil, what was the experience like, having been there in the beginning two decades ago and now revisiting and helping to tell The Descent’s story all over again?
NM: It both feels like yesterday and then, on the other hand, it feels like it’s been 20 years. And it’s just astonishing that 20 years later, the film still has a life and warrants a book about the making of it.
It’s great that there’s still stories that haven’t been told yet. There are still pictures to show that haven’t been shown yet. And we got some crazy input on the book—we had Stephen King and people like that speaking about the film and things. It’s been like a trip down memory lane.
The Descent has been heralded for having a strong, all-female cast. But it’s unfortunate that the barriers females and marginalized performers faced 20 years ago were also faced 20 years prior and still exist to this day. In creating THE MAKING OF THE DESCENT, would it be an understatement to say you’ve also produced a guidebook for those directors whose work will continue to eradicate horror’s most damning misconceptions?
NM: I’d say so. I’m incredibly proud of what we achieved by doing a film that’s female centric. When you look at the behind-the-scenes stuff, you know it was a very strong female crew. What’s slightly disappointing is that it still feels fresh because of that. If this does work as some kind of a guidebook, then that’s a job well done.
I certainly had an agenda when making The Descent, which was to not just make it with an all-female cast, but to not overtly sexualize them in any way. I had to fight hard for that and to make them very grounded and very realistic characters—to make it about their personalities.
Poring through all the tomes of information about the film’s production, was there any specific piece of material that surprised either of you?
JP: For me, it’s to do with the scene where Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) is in the blood pool. The crawler comes out and attacks her and she kills it. Then, as she’s trying to get out, she gets attacked by another crawler, obviously in retaliation. Up until writing the book, I had just always presumed that they were mates. But actually, that was a child crawler! Sarah had killed the child of the momma crawler, who’s then coming up to get her revenge. I’d never realized that before. And there’s the whole story that the only reason Sarah’s there in the first place is because she’s been through hell because she’s lost a child. That felt really quite powerful. That’s why I keep going back to doing things about Neil’s films. They’re just so layered.
NM: That’s a difficult one, because I got to know it all inside out. There was a vague idea, at one point, when Sarah wakes up in the hospital at the beginning of the film. There was this idea that she sees a crawler in the hospital, but very imperceptibly. You don’t really know what it is at the time, and I immediately decided not to do that. By taking that out, it started to throw things into question about whether the crawlers were real or not. If you leave that in, then it automatically says they are real, because what the hell is one doing in the in the hospital? I didn’t want to make it that obvious, so I left that out—which was a good move— but that’s something I’d kind of completely forgotten about.
THE MAKING OF THE DESCENT is now available for purchase.
